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[Sorgklaan]

Since weapons do damage through armor now, are maces good? Does that area of impact and weight do enough blunt trauma now to justify using them over axes/hammers?

[George_Chickens]

Pre 2014 release, maces were great at damaging organs through armor and just generally fornicating feces upwards when it came to unarmored targets.

Now, they are even better. Not just because of armor damage, but rather from the joint damage system put in. Maces do a LOT of joint damage, I've noticed. I've seen weak blows to the head twist necks and break spines.

So, yes, they are quite good. As far as heavily armored opponents go, though, I'd rather a spear or hammer over an axe or mace.

[DeCervantes]

In general I got the impresion that maces are now a great choice for fighting oponents whose armour cannot be penetrated. That's were they are better than spears. I dont know how mace vs warhammer do now.

[George_Chickens]

I just did some tests with a bunch of grand master armour and proficient mace/hammer users in the arena, with copper weapons and full steel armour.

It seems as though hammers are better at damaging through superior armour than maces overall, but maces have a much higher damage potential and a drastically greater chance to twist limbs back for massive damage and drive ribs through organs. I found I had much less glancing blows with the hammer, causing plenty of muscle damage, but when the mace actually hit, it hit like a goddamn truck.

[Splint]

Hooray! Others have vindicated my love of flanged bludgeoning implements! 

In all seriousness, I've usually gotten decent results from macedwarves, Trolls and larger tended to need a bit more bashing to reduce thier skulls to paste; but against particularly large critters (we're talking Titan sizes,) while the macedwarves I employed could severely batter things I tended to need dwarves with sharp things to actually finish the job without the dwarves risking dropping from exertion.

[peasant cretin]

This is all good news! I guess I'll have my adv mode character pick up a mace. Who doesn't love dwarven bludgeoning?

[Melting Sky]

Hooray! Others have vindicated my love of flanged bludgeoning implements! 

In all seriousness, I've usually gotten decent results from macedwarves, Trolls and larger tended to need a bit more bashing to reduce thier skulls to paste; but against particularly large critters (we're talking Titan sizes,) while the macedwarves I employed could severely batter things I tended to need dwarves with sharp things to actually finish the job without the dwarves risking dropping from exertion.

If you like maces then you should use morning stars which are considered part of that class of weapons by the game. Although, I have not tested their efficacy in the newest versions, morning stars have always been one of the most powerful weapons a dwarf can wield. They were even considerably more powerful than whips back when everybody used to rave that those were crazy OP. The trick to morning stars is they have a high weight, a very small contact area and a high velocity multiplier while still being small enough for dwarves to actually wield them. Morning Stars also have spikes on them so they do a bit of minor edged damage on top of the massive blunt trauma this weapon inflicts. A blow from a morning star will generally shatter bones through armor while also severing nerves and blood vessels.

[Fleeting Frames]

Given you can't produce morningstars natively and there's only 1% of liking an exotic weapon when liking a weapon, I wonder which is better: Artifact Platinum Mace or -Silver Morningstar-?

'course, you're not likely to be swimming in either.

[Melting Sky]

Given you can't produce morningstars natively and there's only 1% of liking an exotic weapon when liking a weapon, I wonder which is better: Artifact Platinum Mace or -Silver Morningstar-?

'course, you're not likely to be swimming in either.

In an older version where I last did a load of arena testing, poor quality morning stars made of terrible materials absolutely destroyed masterwork hammers, whips, maces, spears, swords and axes made of the best materials in the game. For instance in repeated fights between ten naked dwarves wielding copper morning stars and ten dwarves wearing full candy armor and candy battle axes the naked dwarves with copper morning stars usually won the fights by a slight margin. I have not tested it in the newest versions, but unless things have changed considerably, morning stars are absolutely devastating weapons that outclass any blunt weapon a dwarf can make.

[Splint]

Given you can't produce morningstars natively and there's only 1% of liking an exotic weapon when liking a weapon, I wonder which is better: Artifact Platinum Mace or -Silver Morningstar-?

'course, you're not likely to be swimming in either.

In an older version where I last did a load of arena testing, poor quality morning stars made of terrible materials absolutely destroyed masterwork hammers, whips, maces, spears, swords and axes made of the best materials in the game. For instance in repeated fights between ten naked dwarves wielding copper morning stars and ten dwarves wearing full candy armor and candy battle axes the naked dwarves with copper morning stars usually won the fights by a slight margin. I have not tested it in the newest versions, but unless things have changed considerably, morning stars are absolutely devastating weapons that outclass any blunt weapon a dwarf can make.

Strictly speaking, morningstars aren't technically a blunt weapon by the game's terms (semantics, I know )

Although it is nice to see support for those too - I've been wanting to field a few of them in an army and just haven't had any show up when I had the funds to get them, oddly enough.

[Fleeting Frames]

Yeah, I suppose if you'd get a dwarf who likes them you'd be better off making morningstars out of adamantine rather than platnium, though steel might make a fine compromise.

[Melting Sky]

Yeah, I suppose if you'd get a dwarf who likes them you'd be better off making morningstars out of adamantine rather than platinum, though steel might make a fine compromise.

Weirdly enough, even though morning stars are actually edged weapons they do better when made out of materials that are heavy and suitable for blunt weapons. The spikes are tiny so the force of the blow does only some minor edged damage before it is converted into blunt force and the tiny contact area lets them go strait through armor made of superior materials. Platinum morning stars should outperform candy ones. It's one of the few exceptions to the rule that candy is the best for edged weapons. If I remember right when I tested various materials for morning stars crappy ol' copper was either the best or tied for the best thing to make them out of although all of the normal weapon metals were very similiar in the tests I did. I basically I took 10 vs 10 dwarves wielding various weapon and armor set ups and had them kill each other over and over again and averaged out the results of multiple runs.

Actually, in general unless you are trying to hack apart some inorganic monstrosity that is made of something harder than steel, candy is generally about equal to steel in efficacy for edged weapons due to it's increased mass. It's pretty much a wash between the increased physical stats of the candy and the loss of mass as far as the damage formula goes. Candy is however vastly superior for armor. 

Keep in mind this was a while back when I did all this testing. Toady has since recently nerfed all blunt weapon trauma via nerfing of bone pain. One of the things that made Morning Stars and blunt weapons very strong against creatures that had normal anatomies and capable of feeling pain is they break bones through armor easily which used to result in immediate incapacitate from the pain. These days they tend to apply torsion damage to joints instead and I have no idea how all this translates into actual combat results outside of anecdotal evidence. Maybe I will get around to testing out everything again once it looks like Toady is done tweaking the system.

[Funk]

Weirdly enough, even though morning stars are actually edged weapons they do better when made out of materials that are heavy and suitable for blunt weapons.

With a penetration size of 500 its in line with a boning knife thrust.
That deep enough to reach the lungs and other organs on a human, so it's not minor.
It takes plate to actually stop them, so bronze morning stars are a really good weapon, lest until the attack and recover speed is changed.

[Neonivek]

It seems that people are forgetting WHY Maces weren't good...

And it had nothing to do with them "not being able to do damage through armor" but rather that they were only able to do critical damage on lucky rolls.

So you could hit someone in the head 100 times but unless you jam the skull through their brain they would be unharmed.

[Splint]

Now, however, that isn't the case. Although point taken, they were generally considered the garbage weapons of the dwarf arsenal pre-pulping and such.